Vaughn Decries 'Blackbird Mailer'
We've now obtained an image of the Tennessee Republican Party’s soon-to-be infamous “Blackbird Mailer,” and it appears above in all its glory.
That’s state Rep. Nathan Vaughn’s head popping out of that blackbird on the tree limb, and you probably recognize the other two.
This is the mailer that the state GOP claims not to know about. (Imagine that.) “Don’t know anything about it. Haven’t seen it,” the usually loquacious party flack Bill Hobbs says.
Vaughn says the mailer, which is clearly labeled "Paid for by Tennessee Republican Party," shocked many voters in his Kingsport district. He calls it a “pattern of despicable behavior” on the part of Republicans. He points out that House Republican Leader Jason Mumpower was quoted earlier as saying Vaughn was “better suited to be representing inner-city Memphis than the rural hills of East Tennessee.”
“They just showed overt racist attitudes,” he told Pith this morning by phone from his home. “You just don’t choose a blackbird to put my head on and say you didn’t mean to say anything about race. You don’t say I’m better suited to represent inner-city Memphis. They didn’t say Nashville or Knoxville. They made the reference specifically to inner-city Memphis. That says Memphis is a black city. These are remarks that have no place in the political process.”
The mailing went out in the last week of the campaign when Vaughn was “quite a ways ahead” in polling, according to Randall Smythe of the Democrat Resource Center in Johnson City.
“Then this mail piece landed on people’s doorsteps and Nathan Vaughn lost,” he says.
In an email to supporters, Smythe asks, “Might the ‘blackbird’ images be meant to suggest ‘Jim Crow’? Every time we see a new low in campaign tactics we wonder if can ever get any worse. SURE ENOUGH, IT CAN.”
“It worked,” says Vaughn, who lost by 326 votes.
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